Tag Archives: Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority

“Congress is trying to make sure the public doesn’t have a voice in negotiations around the Trans-Pacific Partnership. They’re trying to “Fast Track” the secret deal, threatening our Internet and our democracy. Fight back by joining the Internet Vote on April 23rd. Together we will use the power of the Web to demand transparency and give people everywhere a voice against censorship.

Twitter is one of our most powerful platforms for making sure decision makers know we’re paying attention. Join our campaign on Twitter and help keep the Internet free of censorship.
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The TPP would be a nightmare for Internet users everywhere — here are a few articles about the worst parts.

Force sites to remove allegedly infringing content from the web without a court order — similar to SOPA.

Create harsh criminal penalties for journalists and whistleblowers.

Punish Internet users who share copyrighted material, even without any personal gain.

Limit Fair Use to make copyright even more restrictive on creative innovation.

There are a lot of other reasons groups oppose the TPP beyond its impact on the free and open Internet. You can find out more information about those reasons at StopFastTrack.com.

We need to be as big and visible as possible to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership — that’s the only way we can win this fight. We all need to get as many people in our audiences, readerships, and communities motivated to do something. We can make this powerfully epic, but only if you help. Companies need to be the frontrunners, leaders, and heroes on this because we’ve seen time and time again with SOPA, Reset The Net, and net neutrality that it’s the key ingredient to raising the bar and making sure everyone goes big.

Time is short — Congress is introducing a bill to Fast Track the TPP in the coming weeks, so we need to act now.

The TPP is the kind of bad legislation that only comes along once every 10 or 20 years. It has pieces of every bad Internet policy we’ve fought against, and if it passes now we’ll be kicking ourselves for decades, fighting uphill battle after uphill battle on copyright reform, whistleblower protections, and so much more. Doing the most we can right now is the only rational step to protecting the open Internet.”

Today in the wee hours of the morning Wikileaks leaked the text of the environmental chapter of the ultra-secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is every bit as bad as expected, allowing corporations to exploit and degrade natural resources without consequence. See:

We reiterate our opposition to the TPP and to FAST TRACK legislation, which has now been introduced into the Senate (S 1900) and the House (HR 3830). Congress has constitutional authority over trade agreements and Fast Track is an attempt by the executive branch to evade Congressional oversight and is a subversion of the democratic process and a nullification of checks and balances put into place by Hamilton in order to avoid just this type of scenario.